STEPHANIE BOWEN  IS FIRST  TO ATTAIN  NEW TITLE;
WINS ANNUAL COMPETITION AT PADONIA STATION
OVER 104 OTHER CONTESTANTS,  16 FINALISTS

STAR SPANGLED BANNER PERFORMED 18 TIMES AT FINALS
 
By Alan Z. Forman
 
When’s the last time you heard the Star Spangled Banner performed 18 times in a single evening? — and cheered wildly every time you heard it?

When did you ever hear it sung by 17 semiprofessionals, most of whom were as good as any featured singer you’ve ever seen or heard on television, on stage or in the movies?

This is no exaggeration. The 17 finalists at Padonia Station’s annual competition to pick the first ever “Voice of Baltimore” were so surprisingly good Monday night it was nearly impossible for the six judges who had to evaluate them to pick a winner.

Each was required to sing one song of their own choosing plus the national anthem before a packed house, capping six weeks of competition for the award:  One of the prizes for the winner is the chance to sing the Patrick Henry song at an upcoming Baltimore Orioles baseball game at Camden Yards.

Or at least that’s what one of the contestants thought, obviously not someone from Baltimore. As she introduced the song she mistakenly attributed it to the Revolutionary War patriot from Virginia instead of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key, who penned the lyrics while being held captive aboard a British warship bombarding Fort McHenry in the Inner Harbor in 1814, where the famous flag then flew.

History however was her only fault, and was probably the only mistake of the night: she sang the song beautifully.

Not to be outdone, the 18th rendition was performed during intermission by a 64-year-old first-round contestant (not a finalist) decked out in red, white and blue named Susan Clark, who sported a red, white and blue cane as well.

But the No. 1 rendition Monday night was sung by a 25-year-old Towson University graduate from Forest Hill — a community in Harford County, north of Bel Air — named Stephanie Bowen, who blew the audience away with her version of what was once a drinking song, and also her take on Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” her song of choice for the final event.

And if anyone thinks the numbers were “karaoke easy” they should think again:  None of the contestants had a screen with lyrics and cues, and the national anthem was sung a cappella, as it’s done at Oriole Park at Camden Yards and every other stadium every night in baseball season — as it was done in the early 1800s when Key appropriated the popular bar tune “To Anacreon in Heaven” for his now-famous poem.

Having to perform the difficult-to-sing national anthem, with its wide range of hard-to-hit notes, “made me push myself harder,” Bowen said.

The Padonia Station standing-room-only audience regularly chimed in with “O” at the appropriate point in the song — a total of 18 times, no less.

Bowen, who lives with a friend in Bel Air, had one of the larger personal cheering sections at the Monday night event, a mixed bag for her, she said, having to perform in front of so many of her friends.

She started singing when she was little, she told Voice of Baltimore in an interview following her selection, “messing around” at various events, she said, then cut her teeth as a performer at a Fallston High School lacrosse game in 2004, her senior year at the Harford County school, when she first sang the national anthem before a crowd.

This led to gigs from Harford to Howard County, from Looney’s Pub North in Bel Air to Looney’s South in Fulton, near Columbia, plus other Irish pubs and sports bars, including the Main Street Tower in Bel Air and Fattie’s Bar & Grill on Old Eastern Avenue in Essex.

At Looney’s she runs “Real Rock Band Karaoke, a group of guys from local cover bands,” she said, who take the karaoke experience “to the next level” by providing live music for singers to perform to in place of recorded karaoke tracks.

You can catch her performing at Looney’s North the last Thursday of every month, and at Looney’s South, the next-to-last Thursday of the month.

When she’s not singing, she’s putting her B.S. Degree from Towson University — in business administration, with a concentration in marketing — to good use, working for Association Matters, an association management firm located in Timonium, “within walking distance from Padonia Station,” she said, where she is the production and event coordinator.

Association Matters helps volunteer-heavy organizations take the pressure off their members by acting as a partner to volunteer boards to help lessen the task of managing their professional, trade and charity organizations.

The firm works with such groups to manage administrative and operational functions, plan conferences, schedule speakers, implement programs and increase corporate sponsorships and memberships.

This was Bowen’s fourth time competing in the Padonia Station competition, formerly known as the “Baltimore Idol” until this year when Fox Television inexplicably expressed concerns with the local event’s popularity and the sports club decided to change the name to “Voice of Baltimore,” with the support of Voice of Baltimore, the watchdog news website.

“I never placed in the top three before,” she said, adding: “The first year” — 2008 — “I didn’t even make it to the finals.”

Two others who made it to the finals and top three Monday night were Holly Walter, a “singing bartender” at The Taj, on Pulaski Highway in Essex, and Jennifer Feyjoo, who finished third and won $200.

Walter — who heated up the club at her initial appearance on Week 3 of the competition by wearing Daisy Duke short shorts and gyrating like a denizen of The Block, but who didn’t have quite enough to win it all Monday night, despite a rousing performance in a sequined dress that garnered huge applause — took home $300 for her No. 2 performance, but the lion’s share of prizes went to Bowen, No. 1, the “Voice of Baltimore,” who gets a week in Ocean City, Md., courtesy of 1st Class Travel; $500 cash; and a 10-hour recording session provided by Sheffield Audio-Video Productions’ Sheffield Institute for the Recording Artists, located in Phoenix, Md.

Both are co-sponsors of the 11th Annual Voice of Baltimore Competition, along with Major League Baseball’s Baltimore Orioles and Pabst Blue Ribbon Brewing Co., distributors of National Bohemian Beer, a/k/a Natty Boh.

Judging the finals were Lamar Burton, owner of 1st Class Travel; Karen Riddle, productions assistant for the Baltimore Orioles — also a co-sponsor of the Voice of Baltimore competition; Ray Snyder, formerly of the band Tripwire, now in Mixtape band; Anna Mayr, lead vocalist of the band Anna and the Vigilantes, and Padonia Station’s 2009 winner of the Baltimore Idol (now the Voice of Baltimore) competition; Rachel Anne Warren, singer/songwriter who performs with the bands Gunwife Gone and Plurals; and AL Forman, managing editor and publisher of Voice of Baltimore, the namesake of the 11th Annual Voice of Baltimore Competition.

The event raised $2,000 for the Ed Block Courage Awards, helped in part by raffling off a bat autographed by the Orioles’ Nick Markakis.

Coordinator of the six-week event was Debi Fowler, Padonia Station’s sales manager.

Master of Ceremonies was Paul Mittermeier, communications director for the Ed Block Courage Awards and WNST.net/AM-Radio-1570 personality, whose on-air co-host Damon “The Bulldog” Yaffe has been a frequent judge for the Monday night competitions.

“I didn’t hear one bad performance from any one of the 17 contestants,” Mittermeier said on WNST Tuesday morning, as he and Yaffe interviewed Bowen on-air. (Click here for podcast: http://bit.ly/SS1qYS)

Added Yaffe: “The ones I heard were fantastic.”

Photojournalist Bill Hughes chronicled the event for VoB. (Check out all his photos by clicking here.)

Observed a member of the audience: “Nobody was ‘pitchy’ or ‘karaoke.’

“The singers were all very professional.”

Bowen will sing the national anthem at Camden Yards on Aug. 7th as the Birds take on the Seattle Mariners.
 
alforman@voiceofbaltimore.org
 
READ EARLIER VoB REPORTS ON THE COMPETITION:  Click here, here and here.  AND CHECK OUT THE COVERAGE BY LUTHERVILLE-TIMONIUM PATCH.com by clicking here.  (SEE ALSO PADONIA STATION’S FACEBOOK COVERAGE here.)

AND WATCH FOUR VIDEOS OF THE WINNING PERFORMANCE here, here, here and here.